Last Best News (https://montana-mint.com/lastbestnews/author/david-crisp/page/26/)
The Yellowstone River is “one of the most glorious rivers I’ve ever worked on,” a symposium speaker said in Billings on Thursday, but he warned that he has learned through study that “it wasn’t the pristine river that some people thought it was.” (more…) Continue Reading →
Members of Billings TrailNet celebrated their accomplishments at their annual meeting on Tuesday but also heard a couple of sobering reminders. One is that federal funding has declined sharply, meaning that TrailNet must count on providing 100 percent of funding for new projects. Another was a reminder that despite great improvements in the local trail system, bicycling can still be dangerous in city traffic. (more…) Continue Reading →
Imagine a sport in which part of the evening’s entertainment is, a couple of dozen times a game, to randomly fire hard objects traveling 100 mph at the fans in the stands. Imagine that an average of two fans get hurt every three games, even when the game is played at the highest level. (more…) Continue Reading →
“Makoshika,” a documentary about boom-and-bust times in the Bakken oil field, will have its Billings premiere this Sunday. The 50-minute documentary made its Montana premiere on Monday at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival in Missoula. It will be shown at 7 p.m. this Sunday at the Babcock Theater in Billings and then from March 4-10 at the Art House Cinema & Pub, also in downtown Billings. (more…) Continue Reading →
For entrepreneurs looking for capital, Montana can be a tough place to do business. Bankers, by their own account, can be “very stingy.” Montana attracts only a tiny fraction of the venture capital that goes to nearby states. And people who can’t qualify for conventional lending often can’t get federally backed loans either. For Indians, the odds are even longer. Much of the land on reservations is held in trust, and home ownership rates are low, making it hard to find the collateral to secure a loan. Continue Reading →
Ed Kemmick makes me sick. Well, that’s not strictly true, or at least I hope not. But it is true that practically since the day we began our new partnership at Last Best News, I have been tormented by an unrelenting cold that leaves me most days feeling like I have been beaten with a stick. And some days thinking that a beating would be an improvement. (more…) Continue Reading →
Stumbling into the All-Class State Wrestling Tournament for the first time, the uninitiated might think they were not at a sporting event but at a family reunion. In a nearly full Rimrock Arena at MetraPark on Saturday, everybody seemed to know everybody. Wrestlers shook hands before and after each match. They practiced amiable fake moves on their coaches and on other athletes. In some championship bouts, they even wrestled members of their own team. Continue Reading →
At no other time in recent memory have the media been so relentlessly pummeled in a presidential election. So let’s pile on. Why? Because if you have diligently followed the presidential campaigns on television, then you have seen hundreds of hours of coverage of candidate after candidate. And, chances are, you still know very little about their actual positions on issues. Continue Reading →
Greg Gianforte brought his Regulation Roundup tour to Billings on Monday to look for ways to save businesses from “death by a thousand cuts,” but most of those who showed up had bigger issues in mind. Billings was the sixth of 60 stops on the tour by the Republican candidate for governor. His goal, he said, is to find ways to reduce the regulatory burden on small businesses to help Montana improve its status as 49th in the country in average wages. (more…) Continue Reading →
An aging technology and an aging set of musicians both showed plenty of life at a store opening in Billings on Saturday. Smiling Dog Records, at South 27th Street and Minnesota Avenue, combined its grand opening with a record release party for “Long Time Comin’: Lost Sounds from the Treasure State,” a double album of Montana music from 1958 to 1969 compiled by Dave Martens of Havre. (more…) Continue Reading →
